


just a grin

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: dimension 20 [67]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Campaign 05: A Crown of Candy, Canon-Typical Violence, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Light Angst, eldritch fey, in which i take the concept of change and beat it with a stick until all the candy falls out, major character death is for a brief mention of jet's canon death + preston, not a fix it, the sweetening path (dimension 20), wildly self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26068087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: I don't think there's anyone under your skinLike a Cheshire cat, I think that you are just a grinAnd I can feel you laughing under my skinIn which Lapin is a spirit of the Sweetening Path, and it changes less than you'd expect.
Relationships: Lapin Cadbury & Rocks Family, Lapin Cadbury & The Sugar Plum Fairy
Series: dimension 20 [67]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706107
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33





	just a grin

**Author's Note:**

> title is from under my skin by jukebox the ghost

Lapin is older and younger and more and less and different and the same as the Sugar Plum Fairy. Lapin is young, only seventy years under this name, but he's been so many other names, but really it's a matter of perspective, whether being a spirit of change means those other names with paws like his were him or something different, even if he holds their memories in him.

Where the Sugar Plum Fairy is the whispered words of sanctuary gone sickly sweet with age and neglect and the twisting warping sourness of fear, Lapin is something else.

On the scale of mortality to divinity, if such a scale exists, that is, and if measuring by it achieves anything, and if Lapin's opinion of it can be trusted, he's neither more or less divine or more or less mortal than the Fairy. He is something not above or below but existing simultaneously in a dimension the scale doesn't allow for.

In the here and now, though, she holds the power of the Sweetening Path and all the spirits and souls that walk it, and Lapin is a minor spirit lost to all but rotting books and dusty husks of libraries.

He is a shadow of what was, an ever enduring insistence that has been faded away except in the furthest edges of Candia's magic, he is the crisp light of the Bulb and the yawning emptiness of the Hunger made into something different altogether.

He is something that is built on the desperate bite of mortality and then layered in sugar chocolate and magic, something here and there and slightly crooked.

Which is to say, Lapin watches the Rocks family, watches their loss and their pain, and the heartbreak that fractures them into shards, and takes his mortal edge, and grips it, and pulls.

He can't be what he isn't, but he can bring this part of him into sharp relief, and it is enough that when mortals look at him they see power and rank and mystery; miracles, even, instead of what he is- the shifting, changing, not-of-here nor-of-us.

That is enough, and so Lapin goes to work.

The church is a grating gaze on his movements, but there is a dreadful freedom in the lies he spins, in the knowing that he is forever underestimated and such a simple mystery they will never see through him. Their framework for understanding what he is, is built on such a false foundation the truth is ungraspable to them. There’s a satisfaction in it, he finds.

The years pass and Lapin makes a home in the castle, not quite friends in the Rocks family that remains, and on the days that his body feels half melted with his twisting changing not-soul trapped within, he goes to the standing stones and argues with the Fairy, so full of sugar plums and greed.

She will not and cannot understand him, and he will not and cannot understand her, and she offers him power and safety and a way to be preserved, a way to step from the Sweetening Path with his own feet, instead of being burned away or left walking alone, without mortal belief.

It would be tempting, it is tempting, but Lapin is not wholly this and he knows what he has chosen to do, here, and when the Fairy forgets herself and offers too much, reaches too far, he lets go of some of the relief he keeps pulled tight in the shape of _Cadbury_ , and reminds her he is not mortal, and is not a servant of hers.

She is more powerful than him, yes, but he is his own, and she would do well to remember.

The little princesses grow, and they find him an annoyance and a bore and Lapin smiles, pleased. He watches them sneak and hide and learn the way of rogues, and the first time they set up poorly stuffed scarecrows in the pews, giggling quietly, he looks diligently at his chalkboard, and natters on. Once they’re nothing more than reflections in the stained glass, he allows a smile. 

He takes delight in poking at the knight, the stakes of their sniping insults a pale imitation of his nights at the edge of the standing stones, and their traded barbs are a balm compared to the live wire words he trades with the Fairy, all too aware of how precarious his balance on the knife edge is.

A letter comes, a decision is made, a traveling party readied. Lapin hides his anxiety with dry boredom, and tries to ignore his fading power as they leave Candia.

It doesn’t leave him- it is impossible for you to leave yourself, at least like this, and he will adapt, he is adaptation, and yet the discomfort lingers, and so he wraps it into himself, and carries on.

Ruby nearly dies and he wants to embrace the hunger that lines his edges but he does not, and they make it through.

Liam marks his prey and refuses to hide, and his boldness makes change smile, and then Lapin stands in the heart of his deception and is faced with a choice, and he hopes they understand. He will not let harm touch them, even if he leads it to their doorstep.

Harm of a different kind cuts them anyway, and they fight.

He sheds the disguise of a holy man, and pushes Liam aside. The paladin would be powerless against him, if this form were all of him, but it isn't, and he falls, and he wonders if he will break open, here, when there is still so much Lapin can do, so much unsuited for the whirling twist of change to warp that would replace him, and so he pulls at himself and his edges bleed, not an unraveling but a surgical tear in the skin he wears, and the paladin stumbles back in fear.

Lapin knows he looks something unholy, monstrous, not of them or here or known, and perhaps if they were in Candia, if he were more than he is, he could nudge Preston’s soul and persuade him to alter his course, but you cannot be more than you are, and so instead he sends a chocolate scented breeze to carry the peppermint soul away. 

Then he pulls on his magic- _not_ the Fairy’s, and Lapin bristles still at that necessary deception, at giving credit to the one he protects them from- and thunder roars and he yanks the tear closed, his bleeding self pulled back within. Sharpens the blurred edges that leak _other_ into a mostly mortal form, and he runs, alongside his people who hold Candia's future in their fragile arms.

As they sit in the carriage, speeding over stone, he hands the grave-cooled body of his familiar to a weeping Liam and offers what peace he can. It isn't enough, and so he offers hope instead, magic instead, and then smells cinnamon in the air and understands that it isn't peace or hope that Liam needs, now.

Lapin is not cinnamon-spice, but the flames that are licking at Liam's dreams are familiar, in a way Lapin thought long lost, and so he settles, as much as he can, and waits, magic curling around him.

Later, Lapin will feel a shockwave run through him, of death and grief and youth and betrayal, and he’ll run with his people once again, and once again a body will be carried along with them. He’ll be glad that she isn’t alone, and sad that Ruby feels she is.

Later, they stand chained in front of a tempest queen, and he knows she can sense some of what he is.

Not the whole, which is why when she confronts him it isn't about twisting winds and choice and the deception he wears, it's about his perceived service to the Sugar Plum Fairy, and when he tells her it is not what she believes it to be, that is true, and when he tells her that he holds no loyalty to the Fairy, it is true.

He tells her other, less true things of course, and things settle as best they can, but she glances oddly at him still and he looks calmly back. The glances lessen as blood burns and grief flares and the old scar of family is torn open again and again and he turns his focus to things he can help, like the old books of magic sitting dusty in her halls.

They rescue a duke and reunite a family and the matter of a crown is dealt with, in a sort of way that demands later satisfaction, and things are beginning to fall into place, and then the tempest sets eyes on the Ice Cream Temple, and Lapin knows his time is coming to an end.

He is something different, and old, but the Sugar Plum Fairy holds more power than he does, and to do this is to strike at her heart at its most guarded, and there will be no hiding here.

They go to the temple and Lapin feels the cold sugar plum magic in his artificial bones, and the Fairy's voice bounces off the crystal walls, twinkling mockery at Saccharina, and at himself.

He feels the eyes of his companions, and their questions, and says nothing. Feels the ache of being compressed heavier than he has in decades.

He is not of here and not of them, and he is also a stubborn bastard. He’s grown attached to Lapin. There is time, yet, so he walks with a paw on Liam’s shoulder, standing in between the family he’s watched grow.

Of course, then, there isn't, and despite knowing her, the equal depths of the Sugar Plum Fairy's love and fear chill him.

Ruby is crying and the Fairy is smiling, and he feels her let go of the glamor she's worn for so long.

Her faces look down at him, the wind her wings beat bludgeons his fragile form, and he feels the truth of now ring in the air, and she says, _little rabbit, won’t you defend them?_

He owes her nothing but he owes them his protection, even if he knows they grew out of the need for it sometime between then and now, and change is the enduring relentless thing, and so he bows to his old king and the new queen and the knight and the princess and the little hunter, and says, _I have, perhaps, kept a few more secrets._

He pulls the thread and chocolate dissolves and reforms over and over and over. Six arms and four legs and antlers that brush the ceiling, and it's a rush of magic and sweetness, and the heavy scent of chocolate lies thick in the air, and he looks down at them, pulling bows and drawing swords even as their jaws drop, and he smiles. 

He will need their help, after all, to shove the Fairy from the path.

**Author's Note:**

> this is. nothing. but sweetening path lapin was just. so cool and i had to write something. here's a rough sketch of what i picture his real form to be, but patterned like continually melting and reforming chocolate  
>   
> id: a photo of an uncolored pencil sketch of a jackalope with six front paws, and four back paws. his underbelly is scaled similar to a dragon's. there's no background.


End file.
